Wild Things by Bruce Handy5/19/2023 ![]() ![]() Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started. In the first chapter, for example, Handy takes a deep dive into one of the most popular kids' books ever: " Goodnight Moon stands alone as the totemic picture book of American babyhood." The book's chapters move from picture books for babies through books to read to preschoolers and then on to books kids can read themselves, stopping at the boundary that marks the even more wild things of YA.Įach chapter discusses several books, or even whole genres, but focuses on one classic. There's no ponderous academic theorizing here, just a voracious and thoughtful reader's exploration of a genre about which he finds much to love. That's also an example of Handy's tone throughout: smart but light. I'm sort of joking, but I'm sort of not." He cites an example: Beverly Cleary's "masterpiece, Ramona the Pest, a psychologically acute study of a girl struggling against social conventions (in her case, kindergarten's), is like Henry James with much shorter sentences. "It should go without saying," he writes in the introduction, "that the best children's literature is every bit as rich and rewarding in its concerns, as honest and stylish in execution, as the best adult literature - and also as complicated, stubborn, conflicted and mysterious." ![]() Handy, a parent himself, doesn't condescend about his subject. ![]()
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